Newport News warehouse robot firm hiring engineers in expansion

More than 50 students and faculty from Old Dominion University and Christopher… (Submitted photo / Courtesy…)

May 07, 2014|By Tara Bozick, tbozick@dailypress.com | TidewaterBiz

NEWPORT NEWS — Anyone want to work with warehouse robots? One Newport News facility is expanding as the e-commerce market grows, which is expected to fuel more demand for high-tech retail distribution systems.

Swisslog's North America headquarters in Oakland Industrial Park in northern Newport News has doubled its workforce since 2011, hiring 75 new-full-time workers, said A.K. Schultz, vice president of customer service. Last year, the company nearly doubled its space by adding a 20,500-square-foot warehouse at 161 Enterprise Drive.

This year, the warehouse and distribution solutions center plans to add 30 more jobs as more companies move toward automation, said Bill Leber, business development manager. Swisslog technology includes forklifts that can either drive themselves to move pallets in a warehouse or entire computer-controlled cube-storage systems where robots bring specific cases of items to an employees' workstations on command.

Big-box retailers like Walmart and Target are using Swisslog technology at some sites. Because the company specializes in refrigerated storage, Swisslog helped design and outfit a Wawa distribution center in Pennsylvania, Leber said. While few warehouses use the smart systems now, Leber expects the demand to grow in the U.S. as companies can realize savings with the efficiency of technology as shipping volumes grow. Swisslog can design custom warehouses, implement advanced systems and then monitor them from the Newport News headquarters and by staffing warehouses with engineers and technicians.

"Some of the projects we manage are absolutely enormous," Leber said during Swisslog's first collegiate technology fair on April 22.

More than 50 college students and faculty from Christopher Newport University and Old Dominion University saw the robots in action. They also toured the facility's 24/7 tech support center that monitors advanced warehouse systems for clients every day of the year. More than one-third of the time, the system alerts the center to a problems that are solved without the clients having to call for help, said Reda Elgourbi, who manages the team of eight engineers there.

Swisslog also uses 3-D emulation and simulation to make sure a system works, and fits, before being installed. Controls engineer Jonathan Harmon, who started as a Swisslog intern while at ODU and started full-time a year ago, showed students a piece of software script.

Not all of Swisslog's systems are automated. The company's SmartLift tracking system uses conventional forklifts and drivers equipped with sensors that are tracked with an indoor GPS system that directs the driver where to go and store box-topped pallets via a computer screen. A sensor automatically scans barcodes to find pallets, whose locations are all recorded so no time is lost finding them, program manager Sahil Patel explained.

At the end of the demonstrations, Patel and Schultz revealed a Google Glass, which the firm bought for $1,500 through Google's explorer program. Swisslog plans to use the Glass for research and development in its future systems, like replacing the screens and equipment on forklifts by allowing warehouse employees to use wearable, voice-controlled computers, Schultz said.

"We're growing," Schultz said. "We like hiring people locally."

The unmanned systems "astonished" Ashish Kshirsagar, 28, who is graduating at the end of the summer from ODU with a master's degree in computer science. He doesn't have long to find a job as a software engineer he is from Mumbai, India, and living in Norfolk on a student visa. Kshirsagar has an interview scheduled this week.

"That's the next technology," he said. "I really want to work here."

Donald Potter, 25, of Chesapeake is graduating with an information systems and technology major from ODU and already interviewed at Swisslog. He starts Monday as a project management intern.

"I'm ecstatic. I'm very excited," Potter said in a later interview. "I can't wait to start."

Switzerland-based Swisslog bought Munck Automation Technology in Newport News in 1998 as part of its expansion in the U.S., according to a past Daily Press report. Munck started operating in Copeland Industrial Park on the Peninsula in 1985 and then in Oyster Point before ending up in Oakland Industrial Park.

Bozick can be reached by phone at 757-247-4741. Sign up for a free weekday business news email at TidewaterBiz.com.